Mirror Image

“Good try, Carole. Shift the blame to me if it makes you feel better about your own manipulations. You know damn good and well why I didn’t kick you out a long time ago. I want this election for myself and for the following I’ve cultivated. I won’t let those voters down. I can’t do anything that might prevent me from winning, even if it means pretending to live in wedded bliss with you.”
    Once again he subjected her to a contemptuous once-over. “Your surgery made the packaging look fresher, but you’re still rotten on the inside.”
    Avery was having a difficult time keeping the aspersions he was casting on Carole separate from herself. She took each insult to heart, as though it were aimed at her and not his late wife. She wanted to defend herself against his criticism, to fight back with a woman’s weapons. Because, while his fierce temperament was intimidating, it was also arousing.
    His anger only intensified his sexiness. It emanated from him as potently as the scent of his after-shave. His mouth looked hard and cruel. It became Avery’s goal to soften it.
    She raised her head, defying his resentful glare. “Are you sure I’m the same?”
    “Damn sure.”
    Sliding her arms over his shoulders, she clasped her hands behind his neck. “Are you sure, Tate?” Coming up on tiptoes, she brushed her parted lips across his. “Absolutely sure?”
    “Don’t do this. It only makes you more of a whore.”
    “I’m not!”
    The insult smarted. In a way, she was prostituting herself with another woman’s husband for the sake of a story. But that wasn’t motivating her as much as a growing sexual need more powerful than any she had ever experienced. With or without her story, she had a genuine desire to give Tate the tenderness and love that had been missing from his marriage to Carole.
    “I’m not the woman I was before. I swear to you I’m not.”
    She tilted her head to one side and aligned her lips with his. Her hands cupped the back of his head, her fingers curling through his hair and drawing him down. If he really wanted to, he could resist, Avery assured herself.
    But he allowed his head to be drawn closer to hers. Encouraged, she daintily used the moist tip of her tongue to probe at his lips. His muscles tensed, but it was a sign of weakness, not endurance.
    “Tate?” She gently nipped his lower lip with her teeth.
    “Christ.”
    The hand bracing him against the wall fell away. Avery was propelled backward when she absorbed the weight of his body, becoming sandwiched between him and the wall. One arm curled hard and tight around her waist. His other hand captured her jaw, almost crushing it between his strong fingers. It held her head in place while he kissed her ravenously. He sealed her open mouth to his with gentle suction, then burrowed his tongue into the silky wet cavity.
    Leaving her gasping for breath, he angled his head the opposite way and tormented her with quick, deft flicks of his tongue across her lips and barely inside them. Her hands moved to his cheeks. She laid her palms against them and ran her fingertips across his cheekbones as she gave herself totally to his kiss.
    He fumbled with her clothing, thrusting his hand beneath her skirt, into her underpants, and filling it with soft woman flesh. She moaned pleasurably when he tilted her middle up against his swollen pelvis and ground it against her cleft.
    Avery felt fluid and feverish. Her sex was wet and warm. Her breasts ached. The nipples tingled.
    Then she was abruptly deserted.
    She blinked her eyes into focus. Her head landed hard against the wall behind her. She flattened her hands against it to keep herself from sliding to the floor.
    “I’ll grant you that it’s a polished act,” he said woodenly. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes were dilated. His breathing was rapid and shallow. “You’re not as blatant as you used to be, but classier. Different, but just as sexy. Maybe even sexier.”
    She looked down at the distended fly of his jeans, a look that made words superfluous.
    “Okay, I’m hard,” he admitted with an angry growl. “But I’ll die of it before I’ll sleep with you again.”
    He walked out. He didn’t slam the door behind him, but left it standing open, more of an insult than if he had stormed out. Heartsick and wounded, Avery was left alone in Carole’s room, with Carole’s chintz, Carole’s mess.
    * * *
    Everyone in the family had noticed the puzzling inconsistencies in